expanding to grocery stores around the country

A few years back, Square Roots set up shop in a parking lot in Brooklyn’s Bed Stuy neighborhood. The urban farming startup, founded by Kimbal Musk and Tobias Peggs, built a compact hydroponic farming system inside tricked out shipping containers designed by ORE Design’s Thomas Kosbau.

Now, Square Roots is expanding operations (and keeping the shipping containers). The startup just announced that it’s partnering with Gordon Food Services, a distribution company that works with retailers across the country. The plan is to build Square Roots facilities (i.e. shipping containers) on or near GFS’s distribution or retail locations in order to shorten the amount of time it takes to go from hydroponic pod to store shelves. Fast Company reports that each new Square Roots location will get somewhere around 10 shipping containers, though that number could grow in the future.

“We’ll start with putting 10 containers down in a market, and as demand for locally grown produce increases, we can very quickly expand our footprint by adding more modules,” Peggs toldFast Company. With each container generating around 50,000 pounds of produce each year, that’s a major upgrade for locally grown food.